


Whistlebee Hives

by nghtcrwlrs



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Family, Missing Scene, Other, druids are the gardeners and all that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27977997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nghtcrwlrs/pseuds/nghtcrwlrs
Summary: The apocalypse has a way of turning your brain over and shaking out the crumbs.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Whistlebee Hives

Jolene’s mama was the quietest Crick there ever was, she reckoned, absentmindedly kicking her legs off the crags of Gladeholm. Torrential rains pounded the shield overhead and she thought she sensed a tornado somewhere in the deep darkness, beyond their bubble. She hadn’t thought about her mama in some time, but the apocalypse has a way of turning your brain over and shaking out the crumbs. 

Her mama, Petunia Cybin, was a sweet woman, round at every edge with soft black hair that always smelled like honey, on account of her tending to the whistlebee hives. Jolene was her mama’s first baby, born when the woman wasn’t even older than Moonshine is now. Petunia taught her how to talk to the little insects, how to be gentle with such an important and fragile part of their world. Jolene loved their fuzzy bodies and the melodic whistles as they flew. The MeMaw when Jolene was a youngin, a warm druid named Gracianne with thick dark braids and a huge longbow, caught on to Jolene’s potential and started showing her how to talk to bigger and bigger animals. Nannerflies, praying mantises, chippermunks, possums, moose, bears. The Crick was younger, back then, and thin. The cousins had given themselves up to the earth not more than a few hundred years before Jolene came along.Those first years with her mama, when it was just the two of them, seems so far away she might as well have made it up. 

Then, Marabelle came along. She was a fat baby that giggled when anybody poked her chubby cheeks or squeezed her fleshy palms. As she got older, she got knobby kneed and sharp elbowed, growing taller than her big sister and her mama both. Marabelle was always fixing to say something, learning to talk way before anyone expected her too. And not saying anything anyone expected her too either. Marabelle was always coming back to the stump with a purple goose egg on her forehead or a split lip, always saying something about how she had to get in a fight because the other youngins were picking on a Crick bullywug barely ankle high or that Petri wouldn’t leave Suebella alone or that any one person needed saving. Marabelle was righteous, her whole life was a comet that streaked towards injustices, her big sister following right behind and catching her when she eventually burned out. The younger Cybin seemed like she never stopped growing all her life, a hundred years or so of inching up and up. Her hair was dark, thick, and heavy as an oil slick, framing a pale baby face and big blue eyes. And she was powerful, more so than even her sister. Where Jolene had taken to the creatures of the Crick, including the elves themselves, as guide and a healer, Marabelle took the other side of the leaf. She curated the death and decay, the desiccation and desiccators. She grew mushrooms and other fungi, seeking out spores from the swampier and muckier parts of the Crick, a young and handsome gunslinger named Cobb always on her tail like he and that blunderbuss couldn’t imagine anywhere else to be in the world. The three of them became close, Cobb and Marabelle especially, and they were a trio of young elves fighting for the Crick when it seemed like it needed protecting from the whole world. 

One day, Gramma came home. A gnarled old woman, old as the world. Jolene never knew her name, just knew her as Gramma. Everyone knew her as Gramma. She had, after thousands of years of work, finally finished awakening the Living Wood of the Crick and the Breathing Plains of the Field. And she had decided to give herself back to the Earth, in her final gift to the Crick. She passed peacefully and was buried. Petunia had been even more quiet since her mama’s return, and when Jolene asked her what was wrong she saw a flash of anger pass over the woman’s face for the first time in her entire life. “Jolene, baby, don’t ever think that you need to do something alone just because you’re the only one who can do it.”  
Today, at what felt like the edge of the world, Jolene wondered what would have happened if Marabelle had heard her mama say that. 

Her sister’s decline was swift. Over before any of them really even knew it. She was getting more powerful and angier each day that went on. A few decades after Gramma’s passing, Gracianne learned the MeMaw of the Field, her younger cousin, had gotten sick. She felt called upon by Melora to pass her power down to a new MeMaw and care for her kin. The Old Folk’s Circle decided the next MeMaw based on her diplomacy and balanced mind. Marabelle thought it should be based on her power and strength and how much she was willing to give to the world. How willing she would be to do it alone. The rest is a story Jolene knows well enough. She picks at the frayed edge of her green cloak, pulling a small thread out and throwing it to the wind. Later, she would tell Moonshine that some elves, faced with the simultaneity of their people’s mortality and immortality, would give into the melancholy without making much of a choice. She would think of Petunia and her weak breaths and watery eyes, reaching out for Marabelle and leaving Jolene to be the MeMaw alone. 

She heard about Vance long after what had already come to pass. She mourned for her baby, but she had known for some time that her son was no longer hers. He was born ten, maybe fifteen years after her mother died, he had her round eyes and soft voice. But he had no time for the little things in life. And even big things become small for a quick kid like him. He got restless, and getting restless meant he got careless and sharp. It was better to let him go, she felt, to feel the weight of the world for what it was and make his choices then. He might realize then what being a Crick meant, and what he could come back to. And he did. 

She met Lucanus once before it all. He was a professor of arcane history and Erathian linguistics who spoke to her and the then-headmaster of the university about items that may prove useful in the event of some conflict or another pushing too close to the elves. It was a depressing affair to say the least, but the man couldn’t even measure the excitement in his voice as he breathed life into ancient artifacts. When she returned to Gladeholm again a few years later, he was the only high elf she actually wanted to meet. Their romance struck hot as a match. Inseparable colleagues turned lovers. He was handsome, tan and freckled like he had some Crick ancestry. And he was warm. Crick’s don’t settle down very often, but Jolene could see herself coming back every time. But he was a doormat in the best of cases, a headmaster who sought everyone’s counsel but his own. No one in Gladeholm trusted the man, much less believed in him. When she left, she thought it would help. Maybe he would be able to stand on his own. Besides, she had a Crick to care for, one that Marabelle died for. She sent him a letter, years later, after the destruction of Asmodeus and the deaths of so many young elves. Her condolences. He later told her he had never broken the seal, because he feared her rejection more than anything he had faced. 

When she got pregnant with Moonshine, which she didn’t realize for weeks after she left Gladeholm behind, she knew this would be her last baby. Her last contribution to the Crick numbers. She was such an energetic little spirit, trying to kick her way out from the moment she had control of her little legs. So excited to be in the world that she came out before she was fully cooked. Moonshine was born in the Crick, like all of her babies. When she pulled that baby out from the water, so desperately tiny and screamin like a caught raccoon, it was like looking in a mirror. A puff of ginger hair and the teeniest little points on her ears. As she clutched her newest, littlest baby, she looked up to the sky and was face to face with the largest moon she’d ever seen. The seemingly cloudless, starless sky opened up with sheets of warm rain and the baby quieted, as if she’d asked for something and received it. 

The magic seemed to follow Moonshine everywhere she went. Every patch of grass her dirty little feet touched seemed greener, every elk she gently and reverently petted seemed like it was speaking to her. But, over time, as her gap-toothed little youngin grew, Jolene realized it wasn’t her magic. That night, Cooter upturned the time out sack and out came Moonshine with all the other youngins. Her baby locked eyes with her and came running, looking for a plate and a hug. Jolene obliged happily, but as she ran her hands through her daughter’s hair, she spotted something. A small red-cap, almost cartoonishly spotted with white, growing from within her baby’s curls.  
“Were...were you r-runnin’ around in the muck today, sweetheart?” Jolene asked, plucking the mushroom and knowing the answer already.

“No MeMaw, I was in the Gramma tree all day helpin’ Cobb clean the blunderbusses! I helped him so good because I got little fingers and can get my hands in there and then Jonah and them said that we should go lookin for fawns in the woods and I said...” The youngin went on and Jolene said a quick prayer to Melora that it may always be like this.

Her prayer was answered in Melora’s backdoor way. Moonshine had an idyllic childhood, especially by the standards of most Bahumian children. A bounty of foods, a loving family of hundreds of people, and a burgeoning power that would only continue to grow. As a teenager, Moonshine’s power flourished. She was a gifted druid in every way. Animals were attracted to her spirit. The earth and water bent willingly to a simple ask. Gramma’s power flowed through her, unfettered. And so did Marabelle’s. The mushrooms never stopped coming and Moonshine never stopped chasing them. She loved them too, she chatted with them and the maggots and the vultures. The whole world, from sowing to reaping, was hers. 

So when she came to Jolene, 26 years old, PawPaw in tow, telling her she was leaving a Crick to figure it all out, Jolene couldn’t say no. She tried. She tried very hard to keep her littlest youngin, her babiest baby here with her. But who could deny Moonshine anything? Who would she be to keep the whole world from knowing her perfect little baby? Her hopeful, optimistic, powerful, angry, spiteful, loving baby? She’s not Marabelle. She’s not her mama either. 

Jolene kissed her baby on the forehead and wished her farewell. Here, at the end of the road, knowing everything that happened, Jolene would’ve really only changed one thing. She would’ve taken Moonshine to the whistlebee hives, the ones that had tripled in size since her mother’s passing, and shown her how to harvest their honey. Shown her the great great great granddaughters of the queens Petunia Cybin had tended to. But wooden hive boxes were gone now, the stashed jars of honey and wax were probably sinking to the bottom of the Crick. But the whistlebees whistled on, and Moonshine had already learned that she never has to do anything alone.


End file.
